It was with a great deal of fear and trepidation that I went to my church’s special meeting earlier this spring.
We’re a church clearly at odds, and this meeting was the culmination of a lot of whispering, letter-writing, finger-pointing and probably wrongdoing – on both sides. After a long and impassioned speech by the current minister, and some questions from the congregation members who were assembled to vote, it was decided by a relatively slim majority that the congregation would terminate our relationship with the current minister.
I wasn’t wrong to be fearful. There’s a long story of how we got to this state that I won’t get into here, but was the way we acted at that meeting particularly bothered me.It was ghastly. And I was – perhaps naively – shocked and dismayed at how members of “Christian” organization could behave this way to each other. I was surprised by the words I heard, and the tenor with which they were spoken, from people I respect on both sides of the argument. The whole thing left me less than impressed with organized religion.
It was a tight vote, and that makes it harder to imagine how we can heal from this rift. But I hope we can. I’m kind of caught in the middle of the debate – I’m neither one of the “establishment”, which founded the church some decades ago, but neither am I a “newbie” who has joined recently. I can certainly see both sides of many of the arguments I’ve heard.
Among these people in disarray are many who have become my “church family” over the past 12 years, since I first started attending, and who have supported me through some tough times in the intervening years. I’m not ready to leave them behind.
And yet, if we can’t find a way to get past it, I may have to. There are only so many parts of life in which I can experience stress without having to give something up to be a better “me”. Church has been a place where I can escape the stress of daily living and rejuvenate – soak in the music, the play of light through stained glass and absorb the meaning of the sermon – except that recently it’s not that place at all for me. I’ll be taking time this summer to think about what I need to do.
Every Sunday, we “share the peace” at the beginning of the service and I trust that it’s more than just words. I’m hopeful that the congregation can recover; that all of its members can all dig deep within ourselves to be civil and tolerant of each other and to truly extend the hand of peace and that metaphorical olive branch to permanently mend the rent in the fabric of our lives that makes up our beliefs and our trust in each other. Until and unless we do that, we’re doomed to repeat the same cycle over and over again.
